MOSS Multilingual Site Configuration

This article describes the concepts and steps needed to create a multilingual publishing site in MOSS

Introduction

This article provides a detailed overview of the multilingual options and features available in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. It starts with the concepts and moves on with an illustration of how to actually create a complete multilingual site.

Background

One of the limitations in SharePoint Portal Server 2003 was limited support of language configuration for multilingual websites. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 removes this limitation to a large extent by fully supporting multilingual websites. This is achieved by using language packs and site variations. This feature of MOSS enables administrators and site owners to create sites in multiple languages without requiring multiple installations of Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Outline

I have divided this article logically into two different sections. The first section discusses different concepts that one must know to be able to create and configure multilingual options in MOSS. The second part actually details the steps needed to create a professional MOSS multilingual website. The major discussion points of this article are:

Default Language

Language IDs

Language Packs

Site Variations

Step by Step Procedure of configuring multilingual websites

What You Need to Know

Default Language

Office SharePoint Server itself comes in different languages. By this I mean that the media (installation) can be in different languages like English, Arabic, French etc. This allows the deployment of MOSS in that particular language and this is called the default language- the one in which Central Administration will be displayed. So before deploying MOSS, it is better to analyze the different end-user requirements to determine in which language the Central Administration site should be; and to install the same localized version of MOSS.

You can later on apply language packs. Applying language packs doesn't change the language of Central Admin itself.

Language Identifiers

Language IDs are unique Identifiers that represent a particular language. Some of the language identifiers are shown below:

You will find a folder with the language ID of the default language. For example: if you are using the English version of MOSS, you will find a directory with the name 1033.

Language Packs

As discussed previously in this article, when you install MOSS in a specific language, this language becomes the default language for the creation of site collections and sites. So far so good! Now, what if you need to create a particular site or sites in a different language? What if the sites should be created in more than one language and the selected site language depends on user preferences?

Language Packs is the answer. Language packs are language specific site templates that allow creation of sites in multiple languages. After installing the language packs, the site creation page will add an option of specifying which language to create the site in.

Site Variations

In most multilingual scenarios, there is one primary language (the language in which most of the content authors are fluent) and one or more secondary language (the languages to be used by end users). Usually, content is created in the primary language but other localized sites also need to have the same content in their own languages. It will, of course, be impossible to create each and every piece of content, the sub-sites and pages manually in each language.

Site Variation is a concept that allows automatic mirroring of content from source sites (in one language-the primary language) to the destination sites (in secondary languages). While configuring the site variations, you specify the source language and the target language. The number of these languages is limited by the number of language packs installed. There are however some limitations with this feature which most of the people are not aware of when they start working with variations:

Site Variations only copy the content. There is no automatic translation from one language to another. However, this can be done using workflows and custom development.

Site Variations only work for publishing content and pages. This is important to know as it will not copy the document libraries, news and other web parts that are not part of the site template. Even sites, other than the publishing template will not be mirrored.

The content only appears in the target site when it gets approved in the source site.

Steps to Configure Multiple Languages in MOSS

Step 1: Install the language files on all WFE Operating Systems

This step is necessary to install the language specific files for the operating system like the Keyboard files and fonts etc. For this, go to the Regional and Language Options in the Control Panel , in the Languages tab, add the necessary supplemental language support which installs the necessary files needed

For example, If you need to provide sites in Arabic, you need to select 'Install files for Complex Script and Right to Left Languages'

Step 2: Install Office SharePoint Server 2007

Install MOSS in the desired language and run the SharePoint Products and Technologies configuration wizard.

Step 3: Install Language Packs

Now you need to install the language pack of the desired language. Please note that language packs come in separate packages i.e. one language pack setup per installation, so if you need more than one language, multiple language packs need to be installed. Make sure the language pack is of the same language you need and you are installing the 'MOSS language pack' and not one of the 'WSS language packs'

As soon as you successfully install a language pack in a particular language, a folder with the respective language ID is created in c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\template\

For example: If you are currently running the English version of MOSS and you install the Arabic language pack, you will now find two folders in this hierarchy, one is 1033 (for English- the default language) and the other is 1025 (the Arabic language).

Step 5: Create the site with the new language

You should notice that the site creation wizard now includes another option to select the language to create the site in.

Step 6: Enable Site Variations

Go to Site Settings->Site Collection Administration

Click 'Variations'

Select '/' to create variations for the top level site

Leave all other options to default settings and Click 'OK'

Step 7: Configure Variation Labels

Go to Site Settings->Site Collection Administration

Click 'Variation Labels'

On the' Variation Labels' screen, click 'New Label' and create an English label

Step 8: Create Hierarchies

The wizard automatically creates hierarchies for sites and sub sites and pairs them as well.

Step 9: View the Variation Log

Go to Site Settings->Site Collection Administration

Click 'Variation Logs'

Look at the Variation Log Entries and find the pairing of sites

Step 10: Change the Browser Language and view the site in different languages

Now as the variation hierarchy is created, you can view the site in different languages (English and Arabic) in our case. For this, use the URLs you saw in the Variation Log .

One more thing to note is that if you use the default URL of the site, you will be redirected to the variation that corresponds to the default language of the browser. Try changing the browser language to Arabic and check. This shows that you can redirect different users to the same site in different languages based on user preferences.

Step 11: Edit the Page in source language and observe the results

You are now ready to go with multilingual sites created in MOSS. Try to add some content to the content editor web part by using the Edit Page option. After the change, don't forget to Publish.

After a few minutes, if you see the varied site in Arabic, you should find the same content copied there.

Conclusion

Office SharePoint Server 2007 is intended for enterprise users and provides a collaboration and content management platform. This platform has to provide support for multiple languages to be able to serve users from around the globe having unique cultures and languages. Site Variations and language packs go a long way in enabling multiple languages for a SharePoint Publishing website.

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This article has no explicit license attached to it but may contain usage terms in the article text or the download files themselves. If in doubt please contact the author via the discussion board below.

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About the Author

Naveedullah Khan, a graduate from Department of Computer Science, Karachi University has got more than 5 years of experience in the software industry and currently working as a Senior Technology Consultant/ Project Manager at KalSoft (Pvt.) Ltd.

Being an evangelist of Computer Science among other things, he commenced his career as a core Visual C++ and .NET developer, moved to the design and analysis of various systems and now his main area of expertise is SharePoint Products and Technologies.

From SharePoint’s perspective, he started from SPS 2001, moved to SPS 2003 and now an expert level MOSS consultant. He has carried out several projects based on SPS 2003 and MOSS 2007 in the Gulf region.

He has achieved PMP (Project Management Professional) Certification. He is also MCAD.NET and has got several other certifications and awards. Naveed is also a member of PMI Karachi Chapter and Association of Computing Machinery (ACM). He has been a speaker at many conferences and events organized by Microsoft including PDC 2005, LOVE Launch 2007. He has been a trainer at several community training sessions in universities and user groups.

Thanks for the great article,
I followed the steps mentioned in the article.
I could see the language option (English/French) in my case while creating a site collection.
However when I go to Site settings of the newly creates site, I do not see "Varitions" option.
Now sure what I might doing wrong?
Any help would be greatly appreciated (OS - Windows 2008)
Thanks

If I have a site-collection that has 3 sub-sites, and I want each sub-site to have different variations how could I do that? Right now the variation point is a the root directory, but not all of the sub-sites have the same translations... is it possible to do this somehow?

We have multilingual ‘Site Variations’ in our client’s SharePoint site. One variation label is deleted accidentally (but site variation still exit) and I am not able to find deleted variation label in Recycle Bin to restore it. If I am trying to create a new variation label with the same name, I am getting error message saying that Creation failed because the destination variation site located at http://<XYZ>/en-us already exists.

Is there any way to create/restore variation label with same name because I have to connect with my existing site variation?

Hi ,
Thank yo for the post. It helps me lot.I have one question.
I am working on Multilingual application.There if i click on Arabic label i am not getting total details in Arabic.Some of them are still in english.If want to get the total information on my portal in Arabic How to acheive this.
Plese help me in this.
thanks

I have tried and followed this post for a existing site, yet have some problems.

1) Existing site was in english language consisting several other child sites, after following all above process i got the sites into arabic but there were no pages imported into it from the parent site. All sites were blank.

2) I need to set the arabic as default site for any user - how to do that?

Wonderful article but not précised one, why because creation of “Variation Labels” are unmanageable in MOSS 2007 even after installing MOSS 2007 Lang Pack for different Languages.

This is my scenario; I have installed O/s Lang pack for Japanese and Chinese then after Installed MOSS 2007 language pack for Japanese and Chinese. Now I created a publishing portal in English and added Variation labels for English (Root), Japanese and Chinese. Then I try to create a Variation Hierarchy I am getting exception.

So, I did R&D on this and find that, Publishing Templates and Enterprise template are not available for all Languages other than Root Language (i.e. en-US). So, that’s the reason I am unable create variation Hierarchy. So what are the need full’s I need to install. Your valuable advices on this will be thankful.

I have followed your procedure and I created a multi Lingual site collection for English and create variation Labels for English and Japanese.

Now my problem started, when I am trying to create variation hierarchy, it is throwing an exception for Japanese Language. After doing some R&D on this, I found that Japanese (or for other languages)does not contains Enterprise and Publishing Templates at Site Collection Level.
So now tell what I have done wrong.

I haven't been able to figure this one out yet, but in all my target labels (Russian, Spanish, Chinese), the pages look like the styles are completely "missing", but glancing thru the 12 hive directories for each of the LCIDs, everything looks like it's there.

I had this happen to a French Variation in my sandbox environment. It seemed to resolve itself after more content was published out to that Variation - which is a bit unhelpful I know.

One other thing, if you're using a custom content type for the pages in your Source Variation, check whether that content type is successfully included in the Page List on your Target Sites. Sometimes Target Variation pages get based on the 'Page' content type in target variations, regardless of what content type Source uses.

i want small help if you may. can you send me the URL of file that contains the arabic (1025)
to install the arabic language in my MOSS because i try so many time to download it from
Microsoft.com site and the files i had download it does not contains (1025)

I'd like to ask you if the target sites (ex:french, English, etc) may propagate content to the source site (spanish). I mean, if a french customer desires to send contents to their spanish colleagues how could the contents be copied?. I guess, variants are propagated only one way.

If the content of the source site (spanish), say for example, consists of a view in a document library and the view has, among others, a column field consisting of information from the active directory Would this field be replicated in the french site with the same contents?

Content propagates from source to target only. As you say this is a one way process.

Variations can be exported and re-imported. This would allow you to place your French content in the Spanish portal through manipulation of the French export file. This is a messy manual way to do it though and not recommended.

As for your final question about contents in a field;
1. You can choose what content is replicated.
2. It sounds like the view would look at it's local Active Directory store. (Assuming you had a similar view in your Spanish site variation, it's not mandatory though).

First at all, great article Naveedullah. We are trying to create a multilanguage interface for a site in WSS, but it doesn't have this Variations feature. I have tried to set culture in web.config, in global.asax, but no luck!, Anyone knows how to accomplish this in WSS?.

Wonderful article!
However, your statement that once SharePoint services are installed, the administration language can not be varied, only new sites can be created for the language packs installed, seems very tough to me. There is no way for switching the admin language?
Would a new installation of the SharePoint Services (on top of the original) respect the lists and sites created previously?
Also, extending your language knowledge about SPS to cover also WSS would help those of us who have jumped to SPS yet.

The statement made by me was that you cannot change the default language (or the Central Admin language) using the language packs. The default language depends on the specific Office SharePoint Server SKU that has been used at the time of installation.

Changing the default language by reinstalling using a different SKU can be a bit tricky. By default, it will not respect the sites and lists created previously.